Posts Tagged ‘port aggregation’

Caution! I deleted my previous post on how to configure vLAG on Brocade VDX 6740T-1G switch to work with SafeNet Network HSM because actually it didn’t work as it should. If you get a cached version somewhere please disregard it.

I have no idea how I managed to get bonding to operate in round-robin mode on SafeNet Network HSM:

[hsm-node-1] lunash:>network interface bonding show

———————————————————–

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.4.0-2 (October 7, 2008)

Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)

Because once the appliance was rebooted the bonding mode has changed to active-backup and the whole story with LAGs became irrelevant. The primary interface started flapping again and the only way to stabilize connectivity to HSM was to disable the slave interface.

[hsm-node-1] lunash:>network interface bonding show

———————————————————–

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.4.0-2 (October 7, 2008)

Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)

So, back to the original subject of the post: how do you configure a LAG on Brocade switch to work with SafeNet Network HSM? The answer is — you don’t. In fault-tolerance bonding mode, when one interface is active and another one is backup (read passive), you don’t create any LAGs on the switch. All you have to do is to bring both interfaces to switchport mode access mode and ensure that VLAN and speed settings are identical. Here is how our switch config looks like:

!

interface TenGigabitEthernet 12/0/2

speed 1000

description -=HSM-NODE-1:ETH0=-

switchport

switchport mode access

switchport access vlan 12

spanning-tree shutdown

no fabric isl enable

no fabric trunk enable

no shutdown

!

interface TenGigabitEthernet 13/0/2

speed 1000

description -=HSM-NODE-1:ETH1=-

switchport

switchport mode access

switchport access vlan 12

spanning-tree shutdown

no fabric isl enable

no fabric trunk enable

no shutdown

!

Now, you certainly lose link aggregation and load balancing functionalities, because only one interface will be passing traffic at a time. The slave interface comes into play only if the primary interface is down. We’re still good though when it comes to redundancy — you can disconnect the cable from ETH0 without any impact on connectivity.

On a HSM side, you don’t have many options so you follow the standard procedure: assign the IP address to the bond (network interface bonding config -ip x.x.x.x -netmask y.y.y.y -gateway z.z.z.z) and bring it up (network interface bonding enable).